Designing Stylish and Sustainable Earplugs for Music Festival Goers

My focus with this project is designing a sustainably-made line of earplugs for concert goers. These earplugs are called GudVibes, and have detachable earring-like accessories that go with festival fashion aesthetics in order to encourage ear protection in a “cool” way. During the research phase, I studied the earplug market, as well as festival fashion aesthetics in order to design the ideal music festival earplug line. I created multiple prototypes using clay and jewelry supplies, which I then narrowed down to 5 final models for the earplug line. Through the design and creation of these earplugs, I hope to raise awareness and subsequent use of ear protection, as ear damage is a huge problem among frequent music festival and concert goers. The main goal of this project is to design these earplugs while focusing on form, human factors and ergonomics, fashion aesthetics, hearing protection, and sustainability in regards to materials.